SFM Ep17: 12 Real-World Ways I’m Increasing Revenue For My New Business
In this episode I’ll take you behind-the-scenes of my new business. I’ll show you the challenges I’m facing, and 12 REAL-WORLD solutions to those challenges (and some exciting results already). This new episode is extremely actionable so make sure you’re taking notes.
Here’s what we’ll cover…
- The BIGGEST challenge I’m facing right now (not conversions), how I uncovered this problem and 5 ways I’m fixing it…
- Why I’m purposely DELAYING my buying cycle (and how I’m supplementing revenue in the meantime…)
- How I just tripled the average order value of a first-time buyer…
- My simple (but rarely used) plan for turning stubborn buyers into first-time customers…
- How I plan on targeting BUYER traffic instead of “lookey loo’s”…
Listen To The Podcast!
[powerpress]Resources Mentioned
Transcript
Hey guys and girls. Jeremy Reeves here and I want to welcome you back to yet another episode of the Sales Funnel mastery podcast. I know I have been kind of hiding in the bushes a little bit lately. So I want to let you know that I am back. The last few months… Pretty much the whole summer; since June or so, I haven’t really been around very much. I’ve been kind of non-existent. So I want you to let you know that I am back. I will explain everything in this episode.
Basically, I bought a new business in June and for the last two months or so I’ve really been burying my head in that new business getting the funnel in place. I’m still not done yet but I decided to come back and poke my head out of the weeds a little bit here. So fear not. I am back to help you grow your business and do all that fun stuff. Today, what we are actually going to talk about, which can be really cool I think, is some real world ways that I’m actually increasing revenue to the new business.
This is all real world stuff. It’s not hypothetical. It’s not mumbo jumbo or the crap that you normally hear. This is what I’m actually doing in my actual business that I just bought my psy business. So let me just get right into it instead of making you wait. Number one: When I bought this business – it’s getting roughly a half a million visitors a year to the website. So, tons and tons of traffic, but not all that much is going to the actual sales page.
So it’s one of those scenarios where you’re getting tons of traffic but not tons of buyers. A good amount of buyers but compared to the level of traffic it’s definitely not where it should be. So, essentially I’m getting a lot of people, getting free content because the website is mainly SEO driven through articles and blogs. There is no paid traffic yet. I’m going to be putting that in place once I get the funnel all figured out and I find out what my average customer is worth.
But as of right now there is a lot of traffic going to, mostly blog post pages, not all that much to the actual sales pages where I’m making money. And obviously that’s the important part. So three things that I’m doing, there is more, and just so you know, I am going to put together a really, really comprehensive video of everything that I am doing for this new business to grow sales. And I am going to do it as a one video product.
I don’t know what I’m going to price it at yet. But it will be inexpensive and worth way more money than I’m going to charge for it. You actually get to see exactly what I would do: For example, if it was a client, I’m just going to pretend that this is a client site, but it’s all going to be real world stuff and all that. So I think the video would be a lot easier so I could actually show you what I’m doing.
I’ll be making a PowerPoint and go into specific detail and all that kind of stuff, which is really hard to do in a podcast. So today is going to be a summary. For that summary, the first problem is, there’s tons of traffic, not much to the sales page. So what do you do about it? What I want to do is to get more people seeing that sales page. The sales page converts at a fairly decent rate – a couple percent, 3%, something like that. I might have to check my stats.
I haven’t checked it in a couple weeks. Three percent or so, which I pretty much doubled already since I bought the site. Simply by, you know, he had the sales letter in the old optimized price. It was like this long form thing. It was very ugly and that sort of thing. So I put it in optimized price 2.0. I made it look really nice. It flows better. I actually took out tons of copy. I probably reduced the length of it by probably two thirds.
So I’m essentially selling them more on the blog and less on the sales of itself. They’re not going to test that against the longer form. I just haven’t had time to actually rewrite it yet. So that’s one thing actually.
More Affiliate Sales
Another thing is that once I get my funnel in place, I’m going to be going after more affiliates. Why? Because they’re going to be sending traffic directly to the sales page. They’re not going to be sending them to blog posts or interviews or anything like that. They’re going to be sending them directly to the sales page. So that by itself, I can probably double the amount of people going to the actual sales page itself. And therefore double front-end profits within a couple of weeks. So that will be an easy one once I start with that.
Increasing The Number Of Optins
The second one is that I’m increasing the number of Optin. So I’m doing split tests. I’m actually using OptinMonster which is my preferred Optin tool like Exit Pop, you know, pop for your website. I do want to say that I absolutely, one billion percent do not recommend Pippity or PopUp Domination. I had absolute nightmares with both of those companies. They have the absolute worst support I have ever seen in my entire life.
So I’m actually going out of my way to make sure that people don’t use them. They are absolutely just disgustingly horrible. So I started using OptinMonster. That was the third one I tested and I love it. There are more options, actually at the time I’m recording this, which is August 18, 2014, they’re actually launching a 2.0 soon and there’s actually going to be more features. Their support is amazing.
The product works better than Pippity or PopUp Domination so I definitely recommend OptinMonster and I’ll put a link in the show notes for this. That will be my affiliate link but I highly recommend it over the other two. And if you’re using the other two, then change, seriously, because they are absolutely terrible. So I’m split testing different lead magnets, different offers on different pages, that kind of thing.
I’m just putting more chance to Optin all over the website so on the homepage which I’m actually redoing, I’m putting it in the blog posts themselves so for example I looked at some of the highest trafficked blog posts and in those blog posts I rewrote a couple tings to add links to Optins and to the sales page and stuff like that. So that by itself will get more people to the sales page. So that’s another one. I think that’s number three or four if I’m counting right.
So with the Optins, I’m getting more Optins. And I’ve almost tripled that number that number already within the first two months or so – month and a half really. So that’s cool. And then, obviously, from those Optins then you’re going to prospect, auto-responder and in that product…prospect…auto-responder and then sending them back to the sales page. So that’s another one.
Adding A Retargeting Campaign
And then, the last one I’m doing for this, and this is just kind of the basic stuff that I’m getting out of the way first. I’m going to start re targeting people. So, you know, getting roughly forty thousand visitors a month. A little bit over to the whole website, most of that is blog posts. So, to not let people know that there is a product there, because a lot of people are just going to read the blog post and leave. So to not let people know that there is a product would be little insane.
So I’m going to test a re-targeting campaign that essentially just goes and make people aware that there is a campaign there; or that there is product there. And I’ll test something, general, something basic in the beginning to see if there is ROI and if there is and ROI then that’s great. And then I’ll keep testing, keep tweaking, keep authorizing it. So that’s what I’m doing to get more people to the actual money page. To the sales page itself.
Triple Average Order Value
Another problem that I’m having is that the sales page is actually a low-ticket front-end offer. Okay. So the sales page, there is two main products. As of right now; I’m going to add more but as of right now there is $27 product and then $147 product so the $27 product is a men style blog website. So the $27 product is essentially PDF, it’s more of like a basic beginners version of how to dress better.
And the $147 product is a video of course. So it goes into way more detail and you know, the previous owners made videos and you can actually… you know, they hold… say for example jeans. So they show you how a jean should fit so you can actually see it on video and they’ll pull out the fabric and say that this shouldn’t be able to pull out this much. And kind of squeeze and say okay, you shouldn’t be able to squeeze that. Or if it’s too tight they’ll say, okay, the zipper shouldn’t bunch up like this, whatever the case may be.
So the video course goes into way more depth. It’s more for people who really want to understand style and really want to look better. So a lot of people don’t buy. There are very, very few. I think, oh my God, I can probably count on my hand how many people have bought that and not the first one. So this is a market where they really need to build their trust. It takes a lot of contact to build trust with the prospect so you have to have a low-end offer upfront to build that trust and then start selling them the higher end stuff which I’m going to get to in a few minutes.
So what I did in the beginning, and maybe long term this hurts a tiny bit or whatever, but I just held a weeklong sale where, essentially, since I’m getting all these $27 buyers and not $147 buyers because, actually, for a reason I’ll tell you in a minute. I held a sale where I had both of the products, the $27 product and the $147 product on sale for $97. So it’s like $176 or something regularly and it was on sale for $97.
Now, I’m not usually a fan of doing discounted prices because it kills your margins and all that. But this is all digital, so the margins are enormous. You know, 95% plus, whatever it is. So I wanted to do that and plus I wanted to generate a bit of revenue because I want to get my capital back that I spent on it because I didn’t take out any loans or anything. I just paid cash for the business. And so I wanted to get that capital back as soon as I can so that I can buy another business or whatever. Just keep it going and buy something bigger or whatever the case may be.
So I held that sale and essentially tripled the average order value. So instead of only getting all these $27 sales, now, for the last week I’ve been getting $97 sales. And I pretty much did about a month and a half worth of sales in a week. So that’s pretty cool. I made 15% of my money back within a week, so not too bad. So, problem number two is having the low front-end offer.
Getting More Customers
Next thing is that the product lends itself to higher offers, which I mentioned before. You kind of need to build the trust with them first before they’re going to buy that higher end offer. So, couple things that I’m doing for that.
Number one is, I’m really focusing on getting people to buy that initial $27 product. In the future I’m going to test a couple $7 reports. I’ll get into this later. In fact, let me just switch really quick. Instead of doing this let me go to a different one. Because I’m looking at my notes here and I think this lends itself to this other one first.
So the third problem is, they ate hard to become buyers but they’re an easier sell after that. So I figured out by looking at my stats, looking at my analytics, looking at all my metrics and stuff. All of the sales pretty much – I mean like 98% of the sales of the higher end product – are coming from existing customers. So that tells me that essentially, it’s hard to get them to become buyers, but once they become buyers it’s an easier sell because I’ve gained their trust.
So two things I’m doing with that. Obviously, I’m rewriting the sales pages and all that to increase conversion, that’s kind of a given. I actually haven’t gotten there, believe it or not because I’m doing some of this other stuff and that’s kind of a bigger challenge to tackle, so the two things that I’m doing is:
Number one: Thirty day prospect auto-responder. You know, it’s all automated. And then I’m going to be implementing. I already have it written out. I just have to get it implemented. I’m going to be implementing a four-day sale. I’m going to do this all automated so the join one of my list. They see the lead magnet whatever, they join the list, and they go thirty days prospect auto-responder. If they don’t buy within those thirty days they get, it’s followed by a four-day sale so, you know, like a four-day promotion whatever.
And that’s going to essentially entice them to get the first product to build that trust, right, to get them to become buyers. And then, I’ll put them in the buyers’ sequence; sell them the coaching or the video programs, all that kind of stuff. So that’s number 1.
Number 2 is I’m going to test out a couple $7 reports. I haven’t written these yet. It’s kind of in the works, you know, I’m not able to make a huge amount of progress because I’m working with my private clients. I’m creating new stuff for the www.jeremyreeves.com site, you know all of that. So I have kind of both businesses now.
So my time is split. I only really have about an hour or two a day to put into Kinowear, which is www.kinowear.com. It’s the new business if I haven’t mentioned that yet. I’m kind of taking these step by step so it’s taking a little while to get it all this implemented. I’m sure everyone listening to this has that problem.
So those are the two things. The big problem is it’s hard for them to become customers but it’s easier for them to become repeat customers and that’s again very common.
Lowering The Barrier Of Entry To Become A Customer
So what I’m doing essentially is thinking of different ways that I can lower the barrier of entry, get them to become a customer. I’m doing that through $7 reports and sales. And within that 4-day sale, there is a whole sub-funnel within that, which I can’t really get into because it is way too advanced and complicated. It would take way too long. It would be kind of hard to explain.
Number 4, the fourth problem – this is what I was going on before – is that the product lends itself to higher offers but not for a while. So number 1, it’s hard to get them as a customer. Number 2, they’re easier to become customers but not immediately.
Doing Surveys
So I found out that a lot of these customers – and again, this is through – you should do surveys. This is how I found this out, through surveys of the buyers. I essentially asked them why they bought the lower-end product but not the higher-end product.
And most of them, a huge, huge, huge majority, said “you know listen, I am planning on buying it, I just can’t get there yet. I need more time to be able to actually go through the first product and implement it and see the results and that kind of thing, before I move on to the video course which is the more advanced offer.â€
So, I have buyers that basically want to buy the second product, but in this particular case, the buying cycle is a little bit longer than usual.
So what I’m doing is number 1, I’m going to wait a few months before really up-selling them too much. So in the buyers’ sequence, once they buy the initial product, I am going to tell them about the other product. I have the up-sell in place for the higher-end product and, that kind of stuff. Some people will buy both at the same time. But the larger majority wants to wait a few months so they can start implementing the first product before buying the second product.
I hope you’re following me still. You might need to listen to this episode a few times because I’m really getting into a lot of deep stuff here. In fact, I do hope you’ll listen to it a few times.
So what I’m doing is waiting a couple months before really up-selling too much. So they come into the buyers’ sequence, I’m telling them about the second product but it’s kind of like a very, very soft, like, ‘hey just so you know it’s there.’ It’s not really a pitch for it at all. I’m going to wait a few months before doing that.
What I’m doing instead is number 1 – I’m kind of getting them fully invested in this whole – because it’s really a lifestyle change. This is just for guys but it pretty much applies to girls too if you’re listening to this. Let’s say that you don’t dress all that well. You don’t really put all that much time into thinking about it, and that kind of thing.
It’s not something like when you get dressed, you don’t sit there and plan your outfit or anything like that. I really never used to either, and then once I started doing that, the difference is absolutely, amazingly profound. I highly recommend it by the way. You should go to www.kinowear.com and actually sign up for one of the lists and buy the product, because it really is really, really good.
But I’m getting them fully invested, because I’m taking guys who are at the beginning stages. They know they want to dress better, they know why they should dress better – more success, they feel better, more girls – all that kind of stuff. And they are at the beginning stages of it.
So I realize that and I’m kind of getting them at the very beginning. I want to get them fully invested as fast as possible. So I’m telling them, instead of selling the higher-end offers I’m selling affiliate offers. So I’m showing them different ways. So for example, one way to look better – all these guys want to look better, that’s the number one thing is they want to look better.
One of the ways to do that is to lose weight. I have affiliate offers for losing weight because anybody who loses weight will immediately look better. Another thing is getting more form-fitted clothes, some more custom-fitted clothes. So I have affiliate offers going to, for example, custom-fitted dress shirts and suits and stuff like that. That again, by itself, will make you look better. Even if you’re wearing the same clothes, if it fits better and you’re more lean you’re going to look ten times better.
Another thing is things like, just the aesthetics like your teeth. So I tell them they should whiten their teeth and I have a link to Amazon for teeth whitening strips like Crest Whitening Strips. I have a thing for making your face look better.
So I have one of the affiliate offers. It is like a little a facial exfoliator thing. Any the girls listening in probably know what I’m talking about. It’s like this little brush that, instead of washing your face, you use this brush. And, kind of think of it like, a toothbrush on your face but not quite as hard. The bristles are a lot more soft and it exfoliates your face.
So stuff like that, little stuff like that – teeth whitening, cleaning your face, getting in better shape, better fitting clothes. All this stuff really gets them completely involved and more importantly gets them results fast.
So a lot of the stuff in the courses takes a few weeks or a few months to really get it and really go out shopping for new clothes. It takes them a little while to really get the actual results they’re looking for. This stuff gets them results fast, which builds the trust with me, which is what I’m going for – to get them to buy the higher-level program.
Adding Coaching Services
And then the third thing is that I am also supplementing with coaching. So I found a group of guys. They do coaching. In fact these guys are the owners, the original creators of this website. So they built it and then they sold it to this other guy and the other guy sold it to me.
So I went back to the original owners and they have their own coaching business – like a style coach. I made a deal with them where I sell them leads and we split the revenue. So they get more coaching clients, I get more revenue because I get a commission for each client that I send to them.
By the way, if there are any guys here that want to get some style coaching. These guys are ridiculously awesome at it. So, just get in touch with me – just a little plug for myself there.
So that’s another thing that I’m doing. Essentially I’m pushing back, purposefully pushing back the buying cycle just a little bit. I’m pushing it back and delaying the sale because it’s going to increase sales a few months from now. If I push the video of course too much now, they would lose interest on it and kind of just push it away in their minds. So that’s why I’m doing it.
Now the last problem that I’m having is that out of the visitors – and I already mentioned this – out of the visitors that are going to the website, I’m getting 40/45,000 unique visitors a month to the website. Most of them are kind of looky-loos. They’re freebie sneakers. They just want to just read blog posts. They’re not interested in buying… blah, blah, blah.
And that’s pretty typical of people who find you on search engines and all that kind of stuff. They’re not looking to buy anything. They’re not in a buying mode. They’re looking up how to dress better and they find me in a search engine. They’re not looking up something like, what course is out there to help me dress better, something like that.
So the buying intent isn’t there. They aren’t coming to the website looking to buy. Obviously a certain percentage buys anyway, because you know they’re buyers and they see the sales page and blah, blah, blah.
So what I’m doing to counteract that is I’m going to go out and, obviously you know I’ll have paid traffic. I’m going to do that eventually once I get my sales funnel in place and once I get to test it a little bit to make sure that I’m at least breaking even with every new customer, because that’s the way to take over a market basically. So that’s the plan for maybe 2/3 months from now. I just want to get the funnel in place, get the kinks out, that kind of thing.
I apologize if you keep hearing all these little IM beeps. I’m getting about a thousand text messages right now so I apologize if you hear that.
Anyway, what I’m going to do, one of the ways that I’m going to start testing my funnel is, I’m going to start targeting buyers without actually paying anything. So the way I’m going to do that is I’m going to — and I’m not going to give any specifics here because it wouldn’t matter too much. I want you to think of this in terms of how you can do it for your business.
I’m going to give you kind of the eagle’s eye view of this one. So what I’m doing is I’m going to go out and sit down, have a cigar, have a glass of scotch or something, and just sit outside and think of, ‘Okay, where are these people spending money? My buyers, where else are they buying from? Where are they spending their money?’ Not, where are they visiting? Not, where are they prospects. ‘Where are they becoming buyers?’
And then I’m going to do a few things. I haven’t actually made the plans for this yet. This is probably about a month away or so. I’m going to do a few things to essentially create some joint ventures with the people that are servicing my buyers.
So again, I am getting a lot of prospects to my website. I don’t want prospects, I want buyers. So how do I find buyers? I go to where people in my market are already spending money. That is the key; they’re already spending money. So instead of getting traffic that 98% are prospects, I’m getting traffic that 100% are buyers somewhere.
So that’s one of my things that I’m going to be doing. That’s not really getting visitors directly to the – actually it might get people directly to the sales page. But more importantly I’m targeting buyers and not prospects. I just want you to think about how you can do that for your business because the difference is absolutely amazing.
I might be getting, say, 2 to 3 percent of a conversion rate overall. If I do something like that just spent money. Let’s say they just spent money on actual clothes and now I do a joint venture with somebody to teach them how to dress better. They’re going to be interested in that because they just spent money on clothes. So I can transition that into ‘Hey, here’s why you should take my course.’
I’m going to guess that the conversion rate going from prospects to actual people who just spent money is probably going to take it from, I would say 3% or whatever it’s at now – I don’t know. It might be around 3% or something like that – to I would say somewhere between 2 to 4 times that… somewhere between 6 to 12 percent.
That’s my guess. I obviously don’t know. I’m not saying that’s going to happen to your business. That’s my opinion on what’s going to happen just from doing that in other markets, in my market, that kind of thing. It kind of differs. And it also depends on how much money they just spent.
If I target a customer who just spent $1,000, they are not going to care spending $27 on a book to teach them how to dress better. If I target people who just spent $20, then the likelihood of them buying is a lot less because they’re not as high-quality buyers.
Alright, so that’s pretty much it. I hope you got a lot out of this podcast. I feel like this should be something that I charge for by itself. What I’m going to be doing is I’m going to be putting this and a lot more, and a lot more detail and that kind of stuff, into an actual video.
And again, this is what I talked about in the beginning. I have absolutely no idea when I’m going to do this. If you email me and you think this is a really cool idea, feel free to email me and kind of push me towards it. I’m going to kind of gauge it in how much interest there is in it, because it’s going to take me probably at least a day to get the product done and all that kind of stuff. A day’s worth of time is a big deal right now.
So, shoot me an email let me know. If you’re not the show notes of this page, visit the show notes. I’ll have them in the link. If you’re on your iPhone or whatever, click the info button or whatever, the description, and you’ll have the show notes page there.
So that’s it. Let me know what you thought of this. Again, let me know if you’re interested in me doing the video. Again, it’s not going to be anything expensive, $97 at the very most. Most likely less than that, I really don’t know right now. But let me know what you think.
I hope you enjoyed this episode. Let me know if you have any questions, comments, concerns, you know – anything like that. Make sure you share it with your friends and I will talk to you next time.
